Planet Creature and After Maeve

Frank Coughlan and Robyn Brady are parents of Maeve who was killed in a road accident, at age 10, in November 2003. Jan Cattoni is a friend and documentary film Director of After Maeve: a film about the family and Maeve's friends following her death. The film is generating much interest internationally. This blog is for Frank, Robyn and Jan to offer thoughts as the film and the Planet Creature website are viewed by audiences in different countries.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Gestures

Recently Frank and I were invited to share our film, After Maeve, with the UQ Masters of Art Therapy students at the Mater Hospital under the direction of Claire Edwards. They were among the best audiences we have ever had in the sense that they seemed to be journeying right along with us, perhaps because both their own art quests and their clinical immersions had raised the same life questions that we were struggling with in the film.
Unknown to us, many of the students went away and responded to the film with their own art, and one of the students bound the art together in the book shown here to present to us.
It was such an incredible gift from heart to heart that I had many tears for the first time in many months. The paintings and other brilliant works were beautiful, deeply felt, personal gestures, and brought Maeve flying vividly in to us, in a period in which at least my grieving is more mute, private, and uncertain than in the earlier period.